Category Archives: Gun rights philosophy

When you hear “School Shooting,” naturally you think about things like Newtown, Columbine, and Virginia Tech. The gun grabbers like to exploit that thinking in order to pretend that there is a serious problem with mass murder in schools.

They forgot to point out that Jackie Holcombe is a “volunteer” for Moms Demand Illegal Mayors for Everytown, a wholly owned subsidiary of Michael Bloomberg, Inc, only because she no longer has a job being mayor of Morrisville, NC. She pissed off the gun owners and GRNC led the charge to vote her out of office.

Strangely, the suspect in this case doesn’t have any conviction records in the NC DOC database either.

So there you have it. At least this time the gun grabbers are only including actual on campus incidents, unlike the previous time where they included drive by shootings near campus. But do any of these situations sound like Columbine? Newtown? No. They sound like ordinary crime that happened to occur on school grounds.

Why do these people think that the magic line between “school” and “not school” repels crime? Is there something that makes people believe that the presence of people learning things prevents crime? If anything, these incidents point to the need for expanded concealed carry on school campuses. The magic line doesn’t stop criminals from bringing guns, much less stop them from committing crimes. So why is it that the gun haters want to keep the law abiding from carrying a firearm for self defense? Why do they need to keep us disarmed and helpless?

So apparently, Mark Wahlberg is asking for a pardon for his 1988 felony convictions in the state of Massachusetts. Now, as a HUGE Mark Wahlberg fan(boy), and as someone who looks up to him and admires him as an actor and a top-tier professional in a field I want to get into, as well as my being a deeply appreciative veteran for everything that Mr. Wahlberg has done for America’s vets, my initial reaction was, “Sure, why not pardon him? Yeah, he did some awful, violent, racist shit back in 1988 as a teenager, but the man served his time and has genuinely turned his life around since then and become an exemplary model citizen.”

I’ve actually made multiple Facebook posts gushing over this guy, despite my philosophical disagreement with him over gun rights and the 2nd Amendment. He and Brad Pitt are the two guys that I absolutely look up to most in Hollywood. It’s fair to say I want to be like them.

THEN, I actually bothered to look into the situation and his reasons for wanting a pardon…

When Marky-Mark was fifteen, he had civil actions placed against him for hurling rocks at black people while screaming racial slurs at them. One year later, on April 8, 1988, Mark Wahlberg was arrested, while drunk and high, after robbing a liquor store and beating up two middle-aged Vietnamese men on the same day, just because they were Vietnamese. We know this because he verbalized his reason for beating the living crap out of them while he was doing it. Specifically, as he knocked Thahn Lam unconscious with a stick, he called him a, “Vietnam fucking shit” in front of several witnesses. Then, when the cops found him, picked him up and brought him over to the two men he has just attacked for identification as the perp, Mark said to the officers, “You don’t have to let them identify me, I’ll tell you now that’s the motherfucker whose head I split open.” He also made several remarks regarding “gooks” and “slanty-eyed gooks” during police proceedings. For his crimes he spent 45 days in a correctional facility, out of a 2 year sentence.

It is worth mentioning here that at one point, Mark Wahlberg was the number one suspect of both the Boston Police Department & Massachusetts State Police for the murder of an Asian man (though never charged for the crime,) and it is also worth mentioning that one of the middle aged fathers and husbands he attacked on April 8, 1988 lost his eye due to the absolute viciousness of Mark’s assault on the man’s face.

A teenage Mark Wahlberg quite literally blinded a man in one eye just because the kid was racist against Asians.

I also found the following quote in the comments section of CNN’s Facebook post several hours ago by an Asian man from Boston, MA;

Bui Khanh writes: “Hey Mark … remember those Asian children you terrorized on Dot Ave? … You and your buddies chased us as soon as we got off the school bus, threw rocks at us, called us names … Oh, should I remind you about the Savin Hill T stop too? Those were not reported, and I am sure you have forgotten, but hey, since we open up things that took place over 2 decades ago, might as well throw this in the mix.”

Now, I don’t know what happened at the Savin Hill T-stop, but whatever it was, it doesn’t sound good. And judging from Mark Wahlberg’s violent distant past, it was most likely a violent crime.

You could easily make the argument here that this was 27 years ago. Mark Wahlberg paid his debt to society as deemed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and has since dramatically turn his life around. He is an enormously successful actor and businessman, a husband and father of four, donates boatloads of hard-earned cash to all sorts of various charities, especially charities that help at-risk youth and Veterans’ causes, has started several charities of his own, and is, quite frankly, an admirable pillar of society. Without a doubt, Mark Wahlberg has come quite a long ways from attacking, blinding and possibly murdering Asian people on the streets of Boston. Those days are long behind him and NO ONE could realistically or rationally argue otherwise.

Now, when I first heard that Mark Wahlberg wanted a pardon from the State of Massachusetts, my first thought aside from being initially supportive was, “He probably just wants his 2nd Amendment rights back.” My initial instinct was that he wanted to be able to own and carry the guns that he uses in his movies, despite his public anti-gun stance. Lots of Hollywood elites have an attitude of, “guns for me, but not for thee.” They trust themselves with guns, (and hire guys like me to protect them with guns) but they don’t trust you or me with them.

I quite frankly didn’t give a shit about that. I figured that worst case scenario, the gun rights community could point to the fact that Mark Wahlberg was now a gun owner and would most likely become the proud holder of an incredibly rare (but not for long) Los Angeles County concealed carry pistol permit, and we could use that as yet another example of Hollywood’s (and the left’s) blatant hypocrisy on guns and 2nd Amendment rights. The best case scenario would be Mark Wahlberg becoming a gun enthusiast himself (like fellow A-lister Brad Pitt) and seeing the light on 2A rights.

Then, I actually read that CNN article…

Mark has listed three reasons for wanting a pardon for his felony convictions:

1) He says he wants to show the at-risk youth of Boston who he works with that a completely clean slate and total do-over/second chance are possible. I don’t buy it. He’s a movie mega-star and a multimillionaire. That’s the very definition of getting a second chance to make something of your life and doing your absolute best with it. He’s already proven through his life that second chances are possible. There is absolutely nothing that having his criminal record cleared up would do for his career or livelihood.

2) He says that his felony convictions could “potentially” be the basis to deny him concessionaire’s licenses to open restaurants in California and Massachusetts, and he wants to expand his Wahlberger restaurant chain. I don’t buy this, either. At all. I checked both California and Massachusetts laws, and there does not appear to be ANYTHING on the books that prevents a convicted felon from opening up restaurants in either state.

And now for the 3rd reason, listed way deep down in the article:

Moreover, he says, “given my prior record, Massachusetts and California law prohibit me from actually obtaining positions in law enforcement,” which he says prevents him from becoming “more active in law enforcement activities.”

So,

3) He wants to be a Reserve Sheriff’s deputy in Los Angeles County, CA and thus be covered by federal law under HR 218, the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act.

“How do I know something so specific when he never actually said that?” you might ask…

Simple… As many of you know, I want to be both a police officer and an actor, much like our yellow menace-fighting friend Marky-Mark, over there. More specifically, I want to be a cop for my survival job while going on auditions and casting calls during my off time, and if I eventually do make enough money as an actor to do it full-time, I still want to volunteer in my community as a reserve police officer. I have an incredibly elite and rare level of training from the United States Marine Corps that only 1% of the Marine Corps Infantry, which is only a small fraction of the Marine Corps itself, which makes up only 1% of the veteran community, which only makes up about 1% of the entire population of the United States, actually has. I’m literally in the 1% of the 1% of the 1% of the 1% of the 1%, in terms of advanced tactical combat training. And I worked my ass off to get there. The United States government spent several million dollars on my training, and that, combined with my deep patriotism and sense of duty, leads me to want to use the training that you all paid for to give back to my community in a meaningful way, in the best way that I know to give back, despite whatever I may be doing for a full-time career. I have a passion for law-enforcement, and a desire to help people matter what else I’m doing with my life, using the incredibly unique and rare training that I’ve been fortunate and blessed enough to receive.

But what does any of this have to do with my statement that Marky-Mark wants to be an LASD Reserve Sheriff’s Deputy, and thus be covered by the HR 218/Law Enforcement Officer’s Safety Act, which allows off-duty and retired police officers to carry concealed firearms nationwide? Very simple:

The LA County Sheriff’s Department, which I was looking into for a while to work as a full-time LEO while I auditioned for acting roles during my days off, is WELL KNOWN for this. LASD has more reserve officers (800, specifically) than any other California police department. This is because the Sheriffs of Los Angeles County are well-known for giving out Reserve Sheriff’s Deputy credentials to wealthy A-list celebrities who give them large political donations for their reelection campaigns. Yes, in exchange for the right to carry a gun everywhere in United States, celebrities donate a huge amount of money to the sheriff’s reelection PAC, and they go through an abridged police academy, and are issued a badge and gun as sworn police officers, which automatically cause them to be fully covered under HR 218. The only condition that they have to abide by is that they have to donate 20 hours of their time each month to actually patrolling the streets as a cop. So for doing 2.5 patrol shifts each month, they get privileges that every other civilian does not.

The catch for Mark Wahlberg is that he is ineligible for this privilege because of his 1988 felony convictions in Massachusetts. THAT is the ONLY reason that he wants this pardon. He says he wants to “get more active in law enforcement activities.” You don’t need a clean criminal record to get involved in law-enforcement activities. MILLIONS of convicted felons all across America help the police every day, in an enormous variety of ways. They work as liaisons between gangs and the police, they work as consultants, they work as advisers, as informants of all kinds, they help with menial tasks, they give speeches on behalf of law-enforcement, and do a whole lot of other things, none of which require or allow them to carry a gun. Even celebrities like Jackie Chan have done recruitment videos for the LA County Sheriff’s Department itself, and don’t have to be (nor do they demand to become) duly sworn, armed deputies in order to do so. They do it out of a sense of community, and to help law-enforcement using their celebrity status. Not in exchange for a badge, agency credentials, and being allowed to carry a handgun with high capacity magazines around Los Angeles. If Mark Wahlberg actually wanted to “get involved with law-enforcement” and help the police, there are literally COUNTLESS ways for him doing that without actually being issued a badge and gun.

Much more importantly, being a police officer is a PRIVILEGE. Guys like me literally spend our entire lives dreaming about it, and join the military and go to college for it. We work our asses off, stay clean and away from drugs, carefully choose our friends, don’t get mixed up with the wrong crowd, and don’t commit incredibly violent hate crimes. We don’t go around beating up, blinding, or murdering Asians just because they’re the “yellow menace” Many of you have seen my handful of Facebook posts regarding my absurd struggle to get hired as a full-time municipal police officer, just because I was diagnosed with PTSD while serving my country. Now, Mark Wahlberg wants the fact that he blinded a man out of pure racism to not hold him back from having a badge, gun, and carry privileges.

Is there some animosity on my part that a job I’ve been struggling for almost 4 years to get, a job that I’ve wanted my entire life and sacrificed deeply for, would be INSTANTLY handed to him on a silver platter, despite his violently racist past, just because he’s a celebrity? Yes, absolutely. I have no problem admitting that. But ask yourself this question… How would you feel if you were an Asian and Mark Wahlberg stopped you in Los Angeles County, CA during one of his required 2.5 police shifts a month?

Even as a filthy-rich, world famous A-list celebrity movie star worth $200 million, the man has STILL never made restitution to Hoa Trinh for blinding him, nor has he even so much as reach out to him to apologize, to this very day. He even says in interviews that he’s at peace with it & sleeps fine at night. Sounds like a real remorseful, repentant guy.

I’m tired of seeing in the police blotter of my local Goldsboro paper, felons getting probation for this charge or it being dropped completely for a plea deal. Let me know.

Oh, keep up the good work that your doing.

Thank You
Reader *G* (Name redacted for privacy)

I feel your pain, Reader *G*. This is the response I sent him.

Reader *G*,
Thanks for your kind words.

Here’s the problem. There already is a law that mandates 5 years, no parole, for Felon in Possession. It’s a Federal law. And it’s not really that common to see it prosecuted.

I have a couple of problems with this approach. If we are going to make it a crime for people convicted of most felonies (which are defined at the Federal level as “a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year”) we should set and enforce strict penalties. I am tired of it being dropped as plea bargains and treated as a fairly minor crime. If we plan on continuing to treat convicted people as criminals for the rest of their lives, then we should set and maintain extremely strict punishments.

Here’s the issue with that. I don’t think we should continue to punish criminals beyond the term of their sentence. If someone has been ruled “safe enough to release into the public,” then we should release them entirely. Let them vote, buy guns, serve on juries, whatever they like. I am very concerned that we keep punishing people far beyond the term for which they were sentenced. We should look very seriously into some sort of legal “rehabilitation” to steal a Soviet word and use it. We need a mechanism where we look at former criminals and restore full citizenship rights to as many of them as we can. Either that, or we need to set strict time limits on how long convicts can have their citizenship rights suspended.

I am not a fan of “background checks” for possession or carry of a firearm. I resent the fact that I have to prove my fitness to exercise a fundamental Constitutional right. I am not in jail, nor prison, nor in a mental ward. By definition I am a free man. I should not have to seek a permit from the government to speak, print a newspaper, go to church, buy or carry a gun, or any other civil right. But we have a system where it is considered normal that someone will call the FBI to make sure I’m not a criminal or a crazy before I buy a gun. That’s wrong.

Any person who cannot be trusted with a gun cannot be trusted without a custodian. If he cannot be trusted with a gun, he cannot be trusted with a kitchen knife, gasoline, matches, or the contents of the cupboard under the sink. All those items are dangerous yet freely available to anyone who wants to buy them without a background check or really, questions of any kind. And no one bats an eye. A person released from prison for the worst possible violent crimes can go down to a car dealership, hand them money, and climb into a supercharged sportscar and blast down the highway at triple digit speeds and at no time will anyone check his criminal history. He’s far more dangerous doing something like that than mere possession of a firearm. Yet only my gun excites any consternation? That’s insane.

We need to, as best we can, determine who is a dangerous person and lock them up. If they commit crimes, put them in prison. If they are just insane, put them in mental hospitals. And we need to leave everyone else alone.

I hope that you listen to my podcast, Gunblog VarietyCast. I do a Felons Behaving Badly segment each week during the podcast, same as I do on the blog. This coming podcast, Episode 14, I will be talking about the killing of Nathan Clark, the 13 year old soccer player just last week. I will have some very pointed things to say about a “justice” system that frees a man who has 28 felony convictions.

I hope you’ll check it out.

Sean

We need to reform our criminal justice system. We treat criminals too leniently which makes more honest citizens into victims. We treat honest citizens like possible criminals because we aren’t willing to lock up the dangerous people permanently. And the resulting carnage is used by the anti-liberty forces to take away all of our rights.

A gutsy choice, as a butcher knife is just as sharp in the hands of a 14 year old as it is in the hands of an adult.

This deputy showed up with several choices. He had his fists, his baton, and his gun. He might have had pepper spray as well. He had a choice and he selected the baton and won. What would you have been allowed to use? What choices would you have been permitted? What choices would the staff of that school been allowed had there been no School Resource Officer available to take the risk for them?

Anyone want to bet that the elementary schools don’t have School Resource Officers? Who would be there to stop an adult from taking a knife to any one of the elementary schools and carving up the staff and students until the police showed up?

We need a better system than one that expects school staff to die as human shields until the authorized forcible response unit manages to arrive.

Well what did Troxler expect? He made absolutely sure that everyone and their criminal brother knew that anyone coming out of the fair gates was disarmed for the robbers’ convenience.

How would it have been different if the announcement was “Any fairgoer might be carrying a gun…”? Would criminals be so quick to rob a group of people they knew had a possibility of being concealed carriers?

Disarming people makes them easier targets. Disarming them and then telling the whole world that they are unable to defend themselves attracts criminals. This is why I demanded my free armed escort to my car on the day I visited the fair.

For background on the State Fair Gun Ban, check out GRNC’s alerts on the subject.

I think this results from a difference in definitions. If one limits “Gang Related Activity” to just incidents of one gang going after another, or intra-gang conflicts, then the lower number makes sense. The real death toll comes from drug related killings which are certainly gang related, but not necessarily gang warfare.

An important note. It’s clearly not the increase in Concealed Handgun Permits causing the problem. It’s the same people that were always causing the problem, the criminals.

Watch the video Click through and watch the video and you can see that he’s completely nuts. (Video removed because it autoplays, go to link)

Here’s the thing. His charges are all misdemeanors in North Carolina and are probably misdemeanors in Virginia as well. They might get him a bit of help, but the minute he’s determined to be no longer an immediate threat to himself or others, he’s back out on the street.

The problem is that his imaginary world intersects with our real world, and no matter how loony tunes this guy is, smacking someone upside the head with a hatchet is going to cause real effects in the real world.

There is no earthly reason that this guy should be free to roam the world. He should be in a nice safe place where he’s carefully monitored. It isn’t fair to us and it isn’t fair to him to ignore his problem and hope that he never kills someone or himself.

This guy is a prime example of why David Codrea is right about background checks. A person who shouldn’t have a gun shouldn’t have a hatchet either. Nor gasoline, matches, kitchen knives, or the contents of the cupboard under the sink. Anyone who cannot be trusted WITH a firearm cannot be trusted WITHOUT a custodian.

The anti-gun fanatics will congratulate themselves for making sure that Virginia bans him from having guns yet they will ignore the fact he has access to many other dangerous items. They won’t care that in 6 months this guy will be roaming around free, with deadly weapons as close as the nearest kitchen knife block. They won’t object to him wandering down to the local Wal-Mart to pick up a 5 gallon gas can. But they’ll cheerfully support a law that makes it illegal for me to loan my gun to a friend.

I’ve long thought that the bulk of anti-gun activists are emotionally challenged individuals. It appears that they are mentally challenged as well. How else do you explain the virulent reaction to what is really an innocuous video?

Well, not exactly. It seems that Billy Johnson, of NRA News and Amidst The Noise has asked us a simple question. Why does US “gun policy” start from the strange position of assuming that it is a good government position to limit access to a fundamental Constitutional right? Billy asks why guns aren’t treated like every other thing our government calls a right.

Watch the video and see for yourself.

You see the part where he says we should force all children to carry guns at school? Me neither.

Billy is correct. Since gun ownership is a fundamental Constitutional right, why is the government going out of its way to make it as difficult as possible to exercise that right? Why does the Federal government tolerate some states in their attempt to make it extremely difficult to “keep” arms and almost impossible to “bear” them? Would they tolerate a state which treated your right to free speech the same way?

If the Left was consistent, they would insist that the Second Amendment be treated just like the First. But no one actually expects the Left to be consistent. So instead of acknowledging the arguments made by Billy, they misrepresent his statements, freak out publicly, and insist that he is some sort of crazy lunatic for even opening his mouth. You can always tell who the Left thinks is a danger. The ones they attack the loudest are the ones they know are hurting them.